Behind That Corner

Well , I suppose this painting is long way different from my usual portraits and other things I made so far . I hope it's clear what those things are. The corner I mentioned in the title of the post is that thing close to the upper center of the sheet behind the pot : it is a doorpost , so this painting and its title are meant to make the one who looks at it think what's happening beyond that corner?!
Long time I had in my mind to paint this thing , now I made it and can think to some other subject to draw or paint among the thousands I'd like to.
I really don't know if I like it or not , if it is bad or very bad ... just don't be forgotten the main thing : I had a very good time painting it and listening to my favourite music.

Berlin Live Concert 2013

Exactly one week ago I was in Berlin with my girlfriend to attend at the Mark Knopfler live concert at the O2 Arena. It was absolutely stunning so that for the entire concert time there wasn't a single square centimetre of my skin whose hair weren't standing still . Mark and his band played for almost two hours old and new pieces and we , and all the spectators were skinning our clapping hands .So beautiful . All the members of his band were so good ! I remember the drummer who could give some peculiar atmosphere when the rithm changed playing the bass drum , the stunning keyboardist , the piper when he played "father and son" from Cal soundtrack I felt powerful shivers down my spine and all the others , totally 8 artists so good and skillful. There wasn't special effects like fireworks or particular lights or stuff it was just we listening enchanted and them playing wonderfully . And it's not that they speak a lot : they just play and sing . There was even a bit of funny when all of the people in the arena where fired up clapping hands because of a well known and famous song they had just played before , and Mark came out with a mild and quiet :"Thanks, beautiful!" and some following laugh among the audience .
At ten p.m. it was all over and all of us peacefully but pleased, headed for our hotel .
I made this portrait to remember this happening ...Thanks Mark, thanks band .

Brothers In Arms

These mist covered mountains

Are a home now for me

But my home is the lowlands

And always will be

Some day you'll return to me

Your valleys and your farms

And you'll no longer burn

To be brothers in arms

Through these fields of destruction

Baptisms of fire

I've witnessed all your suffering

As the battle raged higher

And though they did hurt me so bad

In the fear and alarm

You did not desert me

My brothers in arms

There's so many different worlds

So many different suns

And we have just one world

But we live in different ones

Now the sun's gone to hell

And the moon's riding high

Let me bid you farewell

Every man has to die

But it's written in the starlight

And every line on your palm

We're fools to make war

On our brothers in arms

What would you like to be?

Few weeks ago, speaking with my partner about general stuff, the topic happened to be "if you could choose , what would you like to be ?" .Well this was my answer: I'd like to be a cormorant . I believe it is my favourite animal because it can spread its wings and fly high in the sky and can even swim faster and dive longer than any human do . Actually it can do all the things I like to : swim , fly and dive . I often find myself staring at them while swimming or kayakking ...gaze they exchage warily with me .
So I hope the next life or the next time cycle, when the time will start again , after another Big Bang and those 14.5 billion and 2 thousands years  the time to be reborn again will come I'll be reborn as a cormorant .

Good or Bad Luck ?

Another watercolor pencils painting to spend sometime this afternoon. I used colored pencils for the seeds and the joker , watercolor pencils for the background, graphite pencils for shadows and a 2B mechanical pencil for the ace of spades .

High Heels

After the so long Cretaceous landscape of the previous post I just needed to paint something easier and so I made this one using oil pastels . It's some kind of phisical law which I discovered and have always been true so far : once you paint something hard , long and difficult , the next artwork will be quick , easy and sometime ugly . Just another kind of corollary that should have been added to the Murphy's Laws .

Cretaceous Landscape

Here I show my prehistorical landscape : a very old tree and some dinosaurs fading in the mist. In the distance an Apatosaurus , a Pteranodon and the head of a  Plesiosaurus emerging from the lake. A volcano is erupting in the far distance too.  Not sure if I'll keep drawing just a bit more or leave it the way it is , maybe I'll cast some more shadows and draw a dragonfly on the right and some other trees fading in the mist ... but not today because I grew tired and need to focus my mind on something else : it is a very long drawing , about 35 hours or so. Maybe the longest one so far.
It was a long time since I drew something in graphite pencils and forgot how fun it is . To draw the tree I studied on a book of mine : "On drawing trees and nature" by J.D.Harding and applied something I learnt in my latest watercolor paintings and colored pencils drawings about light and shadows , so I'm very happy of the outcome . The branches of the ancient tree do really seem bright like enlightened by direct sun rays and the bark of the tree is pretty close to the original snapshot I made ... Does anyone believe that tree is a rosemary's tree I have in my garden ? Yes it indeed is . From this point of view it really seems like an old , huge and wrecked tree.
The idea behind this drawing is an old one of mine but it has changed while giving shape to the tree , so in stead of the foliage I left empty branches , using 2H and 4H pencils I made light branches like they are fading into the mist and even dinosaurs I didn't think before of... it's like the drawing has shaped itself .